Double Down: Game Change 2012

by John Heilemann

  Obama made no secret that he wasn’t having fun with any of it. “This is stupid,” he said. “I hate this,” he said. “I’m counting down the days until this is over,” he said. He wasn’t exactly bitching and moaning; often, there was a smile on his face when the words came out of his mouth. But they reflected the underlying antipathy to debates that he had labored for months to suppress.

  Obama’s dyspepsia was compounded by his hardening views of how Romney would behave onstage. Over the summer, he’d studied a DVD compilation of his opponent’s best moments in the GOP debates and concluded that the way Romney won was by bullying his rivals. (I’m not gonna let him bully me, Obama told Klain.) Now the president was simply incredulous at the charges that Kerry-as-Mitt hurled at him. “This guy will say anything,” Obama marveled.

  The president’s disdain for the process and for Romney was combined with a discomfort with the punch-pulling strategy that his debate team had devised. Obama grasped intellectually the need to preserve his likability, but he strained against the strictures of that imperative. “I really feel like I need to pop him,” Obama said. If I can’t, there’s no way I can score.

  Klain reached for a basketball metaphor that would resonate with the hoops-mad Obama. He cited Paul Westphal, the former NBA All-Star guard who had no defensive game but put a ton of points on the board. Look, Klain said, the goal here is for you to go into the debate, talk about your agenda, talk to the American people about your plans to make things better. You’re at your podium making jumper after jumper—that’s how you score. And even though Romney is at his podium making buckets, too, you’re scoring more. You win the game, like, 150–130.

  Yeah, fine, Obama said. “But what am I supposed to do when he starts spewing his bullshit?”

  The president’s team did not advise total disengagement. But with the need to stifle Nasty Obama uppermost in their minds, they counseled pivots and counterpunches. One memo drafted on the fly in Henderson carried a telling title: “Key Romney Attacks, and How You Move Away.” Equally revealing was their approach to the 47 percent video, which, dreading ugliness, they advised Obama not to raise on offense. Instead they prepared a counterpunch to deliver if Romney smacked him over food stamps or dependency:

  Now, there are people who game the system at the bottom and at the top, and we shouldn’t tolerate either. But when Governor Romney writes off nearly half the country—47%—as victims who will never take responsibility for their lives, let’s understand who he’s talking about. Most of these Americans are working. They pay plenty of taxes. Most of the rest are senior citizens who’ve worked a lifetime, and are living on the Medicare and Social Security they’ve earned. Then there are students and veterans and soldiers who are serving us today. These are folks we should be fighting for—not dismissing.

  The president dutifully rehearsed the 47 percent counterpunch along with his other jabs, delivering them decently in the afternoon sessions, only to stumble in the nighttime mocks. Though he managed to keep Nasty Obama at bay, Pedantic Obama was ever present. He not only returned to the IPAB but did it twice in a single session. When the team showed Obama the video afterwards, the president chuckled. “Yeah, you’re right,” he said. “That didn’t work.”

  Yet even as he acknowledged the folly of chasing rabbits, Obama kept diving into any hole in sight, then trying to justify his excursions to his team. You guys don’t want me to explain anything, he said plaintively. You say when I’m explaining I’m losing. But sometimes explaining can be effective.

  What was going on in the president’s mind was difficult for his team to discern. But his invocations of the virtues of explanation made it sound as if Bill Clinton had taken up residence there. For four years, Obama’s policies and achievements had been trivialized. His own White House had often failed to sell them effectively. Republicans had lied about them shamelessly. In Charlotte, 42 had earned raves for a wonky, backward-looking exculpation of Obama’s tenure—while 44 was panned for a forward-gazing, risk-free address driven by the same theory that underlay his debate strategy now. Obama wanted his chance to set the record straight.

  The push-and-pull between Obama and his team went on for three days. The debate format—which allowed each candidate a two-minute statement on each topic, followed by nine minutes of free-form discussion—played to the president’s worst instincts, feeding his sense that he had plenty of time to make multiple, complex points. I just thought I could explain it, Obama kept saying. I thought there’d be a second question. I thought I’d get back to it in the discussion period. I thought . . . I thought . . . I thought.

  But digressiveness was only part of the problem with his mocks. He was low-energy, slow-talking, soporific. He was inconsistent, all over the place, never delivering the same lines twice. There were no anecdotes, personal touches, or human texture—just meandering data dumps.

  When Obama’s team raised concerns with him, he occasionally expressed mild exasperation: “Aren’t you guys ever satisfied?” More frequently, he said, “I hear ya—I’ll get it next time.”

  But he did not. In the first mock, on Sunday night, Obama turned in a desultory performance. On Monday, he was mildly better. On Tuesday, he took a step backwards, relapsing to Sunday’s level.

  In the staff room after the final mock, Plouffe voiced alarm upon reviewing video of cutaway shots that showed Obama’s expressions while Kerry-as-Mitt was talking. Sheehan had advised the president to glance down at his notes when he wasn’t speaking, but sporadically and briefly. Obama was doing it for interminable stretches without looking up, and he was scowling and grimacing.

  “These cutaways are terrible,” Plouffe said. We have to show him more video, we’ve got to talk to him. This is not good.

  For the past forty-eight hours, the debate team’s senior members had mulled the question of what to do. Their strategy of papering over Obama’s flaws having proved a failure, they considered the idea of confronting the president in a more fundamental, forceful way—but decided against it. Obama was in a rotten mood. Nobody wanted to make it worse. And nobody wanted to dent his confidence so close to Denver. Axelrod repeatedly reminded his colleagues that Obama was the ultimate game-day player. Not once in his political career had he ever suffered a major performance failure; he always found a way to pull his chestnuts out of the fire. After all, he was . . . Barack Obama.

  Obama himself had reassured his team in Henderson. You know, this is just practice, he said. “When it’s real, I’ll dial it up.”

  The Obamans crossed their fingers and hoped that it was true.

  But as they flew out of Vegas for Denver that Wednesday morning, October 3, the doubts among them were pervasive. Klain was especially broody. Back in July, when he’d laid out for Obama the reasons why history would be against him in the first debate, the president had replied with brio, Let’s see if we can break the string. But now Obama was throwing Klain’s lecture back at him, talking about how his inflated lead over Romney and the media’s desire for a comeback story made it all but impossible for him to win. Klain had served on every Democratic presidential debate prep team for the past twenty years. Never had he seen a candidate less revved up to take the stage.

  Sitting on the plane next to Carney, Klain turned and sighed.

  “His head is in the wrong place,” Klain said. “This isn’t gonna be a good night.”

  • • •

  THE RIGHTNESS OF ROMNEY’S head was evident for all to see. Months earlier, when he began his prep, he had said with some agitation to his team, “Guys, guys, I need to know my stuff—I’m going up against the president of the United States.” But now similar words were coming out of him all gee-whizzy: “I can’t believe I’m about to go debate the president of the United States!” Romney joked with Stevens about his wardrobe for the big night. Maybe he would wear a dress shirt buttoned up all the way but no tie. The press would go crazy if he sported “the Ahmadinejad look,” Mitt cracked.

  Romney had arriv
ed in Denver two days before Obama, giving himself time to get acclimated. His hotel, the Renaissance, turned out to be a nightmare: forty-five minutes from the University of Denver debate site and overlooking railroad tracks. The trains rumbled loudly and around the clock; guests found hotel-provided earplugs in their bathrooms. The first night, Mitt barely caught a wink. But his mood was so upbeat, he offered no complaint. (The next night, on the eve of the most important political event of his life, his shut-eye was dependent on a box fan placed in his room to drown out the noise.)

  Obama was staying not far away, at the Doubletree. Arriving in the afternoon, he had minimal downtime before the debate. His dinner came late; he had to eat in a rush. For reasons surpassing understanding, he was unable to find a phone line to connect him to his daughters in Washington. Romney, meanwhile, was backstage at the debate site, surrounded by his kids and grandkids, playing Jenga.

  A few minutes before the 7:00 p.m. start time, Romney huddled with Stevens and Myers for a final pregame pep talk. “You control this debate from four corners,” Stevens said. “Don’t take the rhythm of the debate from him. It all comes to you. You control it. All these people wanted to be here, at this moment. You’re here. You’re gonna own this.”

  Romney smiled and said, “I think we’ll have fun.”

  The paradigm for the entire debate was established in the first five minutes. October 3 was, by coincidence, Barack and Michelle’s twentieth wedding anniversary. In his opening statement, Obama met the eyes of his wife in the front row. “I just want to wish, sweetie, you happy anniversary and let you know that a year from now we will not be celebrating it in front of forty million people,” he said.

  Rob Portman had predicted that Obama would do this very thing. In every one of Romney’s ten pre-Denver mocks, Fauxbama opened with a shout-out to Michelle. Gillespie had supplied Romney with a funny follow-up, which he delivered in his opening. “Congratulations to you, Mr. President, on your anniversary; I’m sure this was the most romantic place you could imagine—here with me,” he quipped. The audience laughed. Even Obama laughed. Mitt was off and running.

  For the next ninety minutes, Romney put on a clinic. He was clear, crisp, confident, energetic, fluent on policy, and in complete command of his bullet points. His indictments of Obama were sharp without being shrill. He was tough but likable, aggressive but not off-putting, convincingly presidential but recognizably human. He came across as a pragmatist and a manager, the very sort of Mr. Fix-It that many around him had wanted him to be in 2008 and again in 2012—like the Mitt who ran for office in Massachusetts in 1994 and 2002.

  Tonally and substantively, Romney aimed for the middle of the electorate. He touted his record in the Bay State, especially on education, and talked up bipartisanship. He declared that “regulation is essential” and hit Obama from the left on Dodd-Frank, calling it “the biggest kiss that’s been given to New York banks I’ve ever seen.” Some of his claims were false, such as the boast that his health-care plan covered folks with preexisting conditions. Others were disputable, notably an assertion that his budget plan did not entail a $5 trillion tax cut tilted toward the wealthy (as many independent analysts maintained). “I know that you and your running mate keep saying that,” Romney said to Obama. “Look, I’ve got five boys. I’m used to people saying something that’s not always true but just keep on repeating it and ultimately hoping I’ll believe it. But that is not the case.”

  Through it all, the president was the man who wasn’t there—passive and somnolent, enduring the experience rather than embracing it, not an ounce of verve or fight or passion in him. Stylistically, Obama’s performance was Henderson redux, only worse. The split-screen shots captured him staring down at his notes even more than in the mock video that had unnerved Plouffe. Though Nasty Obama made no appearances, Peevish Obama did. When Jim Lehrer tried to cut him off—“Two minutes is up, sir”—the president protested, “No, I had five seconds before you interrupted me.”

  In the Obama staff room backstage, the president’s team wondered if their man was suffering from aphasia. Midway through the debate, Romney tossed a hanging curve into Obama’s wheelhouse, remarking, in an exchange about tax policy, “I maybe need to get a new accountant.” Axelrod waited for the president to swing: The last thing you need, Mitt, is better accountants; yours seem to be doing a bang-up job already. But Obama let the pitch sail by. A little later, the debate team groaned when he mentioned the IPAB. When he did it a second time, they groaned louder. When, astoundingly, he did it a third time, a hush fell on the room. A triple IPAB? thought Klain. This debate is over.

  In the Romney staff room, the excitement was so great that people found it hard to remain in their chairs. At the end of the ninety minutes, when Lehrer signed off with “Thank you, and good night,” a whoop went up. Myers shouted, “That was a game changer!”

  Romney exited the stage and headed back to his side’s holding room, where he found the hall lined with his people as if it were the locker-room runway at Notre Dame. Cheering, screaming, huzzahing at the top of their lungs, they hailed the conquering hero. Mitt and Ann embraced. “Dad, you crushed him!” Tagg exclaimed.

  Romney could hardly contain himself. Bewildered by Obama’s limp performance, he was most stupefied by the absence of any mention of the 47 percent. “I was ready for it!” Mitt insisted.

  Stevens found Romney minutes later. “You were right,” Stuart said. “It was fun, wasn’t it?”

  “Yeah, it was fun,” Romney said.

  Back at the Renaissance, Gillespie came into Mitt’s suite and gave him a hug. Garrett Jackson had read Romney some of the Twitter reaction, but Mitt had no idea how the story was being covered otherwise.

  “I feel like it went well,” he said to Gillespie. “How’s it playing?”

  “All you have to do is turn on MSNBC to know,” Gillespie answered, grinning. “They’re in tears.”

  The consensus that Romney had cleaned Obama’s clock wasn’t confined to the left, let alone its institutional voice on cable. A CNN instant poll found that 67 percent of viewers gave Mitt the win; a Democracy Corps focus group showed a spike in his favorable ratings on the basis of the debate. From the right, Bill Kristol blogged that Romney had turned in “the best debate performance by a GOP candidate in more than two decades.” From the center, Politico’s Roger Simon said it looked as if “someone had slipped [the president] an Ambien.”

  But the caterwauling from Obama devotees was earsplitting indeed. On Twitter, super-blogger Andrew Sullivan spat out a series of harsh judgments: that Obama had shown himself “too arrogant to take a core campaign responsibility seriously,” that the debate had been “a disaster” for the president. On MSNBC, as Gillespie indicated, the reaction was something akin to a collective primal scream.

  “I don’t know what [Obama] was doing out there!!!” Chris Matthews bayed. “I don’t know how he let Romney get away with the crap he threw at him tonight! . . . Where was Obama tonight?! . . . What was he doing tonight?! He went in there disarmed!!! . . . What was Romney doing? He was winning!!!”

  Lawrence O’Donnell was more subdued, but no less pointed. “The president clearly came in with what I would call a presidential strategy in the debate,” he said. “Team Obama might want to look at that tonight and say, ‘We’ve got to change that.’”

  • • •

  OBAMA BEELINED IT BACK to the Doubletree after the debate for a small anniversary party with his wife, Jarrett, his friend Marty Nesbitt, and a few others. Momentarily unconnected to the mediasphere, he was unaware of the universal perception that he’d bombed. Romney did fine, but I did fine, too, Obama thought. I got my points across.

  Michelle and Valerie had sat next to each other during the debate, as was their wont in 2008, and both were stunned by the strength of Romney’s performance. Leaning over and nudging Michelle, Jarrett whispered, “Boy, he’s good.” Back at the Doubletree, they were slightly shaken by what had occurred; there was no doubt in
FLOTUS’s mind that her husband had lost.

  Once POTUS had a chance to sample the coverage on his iPad, he began to get the picture—but even then, he resisted the world’s verdict. When Plouffe arrived at the hotel after a futile half an hour with the press, trying to spin the unspinnable, he met Obama in the hallway outside his suite.

  “I didn’t think it was that bad,” the president said.

  “Yeah, it was that bad,” Plouffe replied. “We just have to figure out how to fix it.”

  Klain was on his way to the hotel, too, but became snarled in traffic. Eventually his cell phone rang, with Obama on the line.

  “It didn’t feel that bad to me, but it seems like it’s pretty bad,” said 44. “I feel like I executed the strategy.”

  “I think we had a failure of strategy and execution both,” Klain said.

  Klain went on to tell Obama that he would have scored the debate 60/40 for Romney, but it was being covered as an 80/20 wipeout. The disparity, Klain said, was due largely to the meltdown of the Democratic base and the novel impact of social media, especially Twitter, which amplified every meme with a fierce instantaneity. (During the ninety minutes of the Denver debate, there were 10.3 million tweets about it.) In the past, presidential debate performances had been judged by their effect on undecided voters. Here, Obama was being pilloried not for failing to move to the middle but for missing opportunities to decapitate Romney.

  Obama’s high command convened an emergency meeting at the hotel, which ran well into the early hours of the morning. Every presidential campaign starts out with a game plan, but aware that it is provisional, that unexpected events will inevitably arise and compel the coaches and players to go back to the drawing board. Chicago’s execution hadn’t always been flawless, but it had never once been forced to deviate from its playbook. Now it was reformulating its strategy on the fly and under pressure.